1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for controlling an interface between a Transition Integrated Circuit (TIC) that controls the interface with a hard disc drive (HDD) built in a mobile communication terminal and the HDD. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method for controlling an interface that can minimize the power consumption of the mobile communication terminal.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, a mobile communication terminal represents a device that wirelessly communicates with a base station, and primarily performs phone calls. In the present state, however, additional functions for processing multimedia information have gradually added to the mobile communication terminal in addition to the phone call function. For example, a camera may be attached to the mobile communication terminal to process image data and additional functions such as music files, electronic pocket books, and so on, may be performed in the mobile communication terminal. In order to process the multimedia functions as described above, in other words, in order to store media data such as music and image data, such as moving image and still image, the mobile communication terminal requires a large memory capacity.
To achieve this, the mobile communication terminal is provided with an auxiliary memory built in the terminal or provided outside the terminal. A semiconductor memory or a disk memory may be used as the auxiliary memory. The semiconductor memory may be a nonvolatile memory such as a flash memory and the disk memory may be an HDD, an Optical Disk Drive (ODD), and so on. The ODD may comprise a Write Once Read Many (WORM)-type CD-ROM, digital video disc (DVD), and so on.
Meanwhile, in the case of the mobile communication terminal having the HDD as the auxiliary memory (hereinafter referred to as a hard-disk mobile communication terminal), the terminal performs a data access process as needed in order to write/read the data into/out of the HDD.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating a construction required to write/read data into/out of an HDD in a mobile communication terminal.
A Transition Integrated Circuit (TIC) 120 comprises an interface that takes part in the data and address input/output (I/O) with respect to the HDD. The TIC 120 supports a true Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) mode and performs the interface between a control unit 110 and the HDD 130. Accordingly, the TIC 120 should always be in a wake state so that the HDD 130 in the true IDE mode can achieve a smooth interface with the control unit 110. In other words, since a HDD access request clock may unexpectedly be produced, power should always be supplied to the TIC 120 by way of precaution against this.
The TIC 120 should always be in a wake state for the above-described reason, and it causes unnecessary power consumption to occur. That is, as illustrated in FIG. 2, since the power should always be supplied to the TIC in order to perform irregular HDD access, power 204 for operating the TIC should always be provided in addition to power 202 for driving the HDD. This is quite inefficient in consideration of the limited power capacity of a battery provided in a mobile communication terminal. If a stable power should continuously be supplied to the TIC for instantaneous access to the HDD, a continuous power consumption also occurs, resulting in a user being unable to use the mobile communication terminal for a sufficient time although the battery of the mobile communication terminal has been charged once.